The Schoodic section of Acadia National Park so far this year is busier with tourists than it ever has been, and area business owners say the increased traffic has been paying off.
As of last weekend, the area tallied roughly 40,000 more visits so far in 2025 than at the end of August in recent years, which saw park visitations nationwide surge in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 268,000 estimated total visits at Schoodic from January through August is more than any entire year prior to 2016 — and Maine’s tourist season is expected to last another several weeks.
“It’s been great,” said Karin McLean, owner of Mc’s Market in the Gouldsboro village of Birch Harbor. “We love the summer business and wished it lasted longer.”
The Schoodic Peninsula, located on the eastern side of Frenchman Bay about an hour by car from Bar Harbor, has long been one of the quieter portions of the park. Over the past four years, it has averaged around 335,000 visits annually, which is less than 10 percent of the park’s overall yearly visits.
But as tourist visits to Mount Desert Island have soared to nearly 4 million a year, the number of people visiting Schoodic also has increased. Acadia as a whole never got much more than 3.5 million annual visits prior to 2020, while Schoodic had never gotten more than 300,000 a year until 2021.
McLean said the summer crowds on MDI, and the dry weather in general, are among the reasons why more people are visiting Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor, both of which abut the Schoodic section of the park. The seasonal ferry that runs between Bar Harbor and Winter Harbor, which makes four scenic trips per day, has helped to draw more people to the peninsula, she said. And with more tourists staying overnight in Ellsworth, getting to the Schoodic peninsula is a shorter trip by car.
When Hurricane Erin passed by last month far out to sea, she said, visitors and residents alike crowded the local shoreline to see the rough surf churned up by the storm, she said. The increased traffic in general this summer has helped boost sales at her market, especially in the store’s deli department, she added.
“We hear that all the time,” McLean said of people who want to avoid the congestion on the western side of Frenchman Bay. “They say ‘Bar Harbor is too packed and there’s no parking.’”
Peter Drinkwater, a real estate agent and owner of the Winter Harbor 5 & 10 store in that town’s central village, said the Schoodic area has a fair amount of weekly vacation rental properties. Both Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro — and other nearby towns — also have long had an ample number of summer residents, he added.
Winter Harbor has around 500 year-round residents, while Gouldsboro has around 1,700, according to the 2020 U.S. Census.
“Our sales are up from last year,” Drinkwater said of his store, though he added that not many daytripper tourists come into the business. “We’ve had a lot of Midwesterners this year. The restaurants have been doing good this summer.”
The economy of the Schoodic-area towns has recently become more reliant on tourism, Drinkwater said.
Lobster fishing has been important locally for decades, as in a lot of coastal Maine towns, though catch volumes have steadily decreased in recent years. For roughly 70 years, Winter Harbor also housed Navy personnel who were stationed at a communications monitoring base at the tip of the peninsula, where Schoodic Institute now runs Acadia’s learning and research center.
In 2010, Bumble Bee Foods closed down the United States’ last sardine cannery at a now defunct seafood processing plant in Gouldsboro, eliminating more than 100 local jobs.
It wasn’t until after the Navy left Schoodic Point in 2002 that Acadia began to promote its Schoodic section to visitors, Drinkwater said. The impact of summer visitors, whether they stay for a few hours or a few weeks, has only grown since then. With little going on locally in the winter, the growth in tourism has helped offset those other economic losses, he said.
“When you have no businesses, you have no town, basically,” Drinkwater said. “That’s the only way we can keep going year-round, is to have summer people and tourists.”
Jamie Watson, who with his wife owns and runs Bunker’s Seafood and Spirits in the Gouldsboro village of Bunker’s Harbor, estimated that his sales this summer have been about 15 percent higher than in 2024. He said their waterfront restaurant is the first one visitors come across after they drive along the park’s one-way Schoodic Loop Road, and that many people want to prolong their visit.
“They absolutely love it,” he said of his customers’ reactions to the peninsula’s rugged scenery. “You can’t beat the view.”
Watson said their restaurant had its busiest night ever a couple of weeks ago, around the time when Hurricane Erin drew surf-watchers to Schoodic Point. He said he would be happy to be that busy more often.
“They’re coming. They’re finding it,” he said of tourists making their way to Acadia’s Schoodic section. “I can’t complain. I have no issues with it.”
